Rand Unwrapped Page 3

  CHAPTER 2

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  Everybody’s Got to Start Somewhere

  “A man’s gotta do – what a man’s gotta do…”

  - Episode 24 – Dark Finale

  In my case, my professional career as a voice artist began when I was living in Hawaii attending graduate school. I was cast to create a voice for the title character in a live action series called Ultra 7. I voiced the character, who by day was Dan Moroboshi - Planet Man Dan and by night the super hero Ultra 7. The series was originally created and successfully broadcast in Japan in 1967 as Urutora Sebun. My girlfriend at the time got me the job because she knew the producer’s daughter. They asked me to go in and read a few lines and then told me I got the job. I had never dubbed before but figured how hard could it be? I accepted the offer and became involved in the dubbing of this series into English while I was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii studying Kabuki, Peking Opera as well as acting. The program at the university seemed to me to be more academic than artistic for my liking but I did have a significant financial package at the school, so I stayed. And I’m so glad I did! I had the opportunity to study acting with some of the best teachers I’ve ever had. The first is Glenn Cannon and despite his Hawaiian address, Glenn was a very east coast actor/director rooted in a no nonsense approach to creating a character and putting it up on stage or film. You would think to study acting of this professional caliber; one would have to go to Los Angeles or New York City. But Glenn taught be how to find a character within a script, interpret it and then put it up on stage. I went through the script page by page, and looked for clues. What did the playwright say about my character? What did my character say about himself and lastly what did other characters say about my character? Within that matrix, the truth could be found. This was a great lesson for me. Glenn cast me in a production of Moliere’s Scapin to play the title role. It was a fast paced farcical romp that toured most of the island of Oahu in parks, schools and theatres. Glenn allowed me to fully explore the character and put a lot of myself into the role. My character, Scapino, opened the play each performance eating a two-foot long hero sandwich while talking directly to the audience. It was fun and built upon my improvisational skills and most importantly I couldn’t make a bad choice because I was so totally connected to the character. Glenn was then and is now a professional actor, director and teacher. At that time, he was a reoccurring character on the Hawaii 5-0 television series. He also performed and directed professionally for the stage. He brought a lot of what I will call “reality” to the craft of acting. He told it like it was and was great to work with as a director. My other acting teacher at the University of Hawaii, Terence Knapp was trained in England, and taught me about what he often called “leaping into the darkness” when creating a character. From him, I learned to take risks in the creation of a character rather than just create a stereotype rendition of what was in the script. At the time, I studied with Knapp; I didn’t always appreciate the “leap in the darkness” idea of creating a character. I was more about getting it done point-to-point and wanted to leave the leaping to someone else. I wanted to do the things that I knew would be audience pleasers rather than try to explore the inner workings of the character. However, it was in this inner exploration that Terrence Knapp taught me that the true core of a character lived. At the time, I hated this creative process, but over the years, and with decades of teaching acting behind me I now can see clearly that he was right on the mark. I got to work with Terence Knapp on a project called the Mysteries and the Passion which was a medieval cycle play made up of several smaller stories centered around the Bible. I opened this show as well playing Adam in the Garden of Eden. There was a lot of talk around town that the Adam and Eve Garden of Eden scene was going to be performed in the nude. In the final production, this did not happen and I was extremely glad about that. Instead, Knapp put us in anatomically correct tights and we played the Garden of Eden as more of a dance piece than a scene. It was beautifully done as a metaphor of the loss of innocence rather than a scene about the original sin. It was very powerful and really set up the rest of the production quite well. After Adam, I played other roles in the same production – The Second Shepard in the Second Shepard’s Play and finally Pontius Pilot in the Crucifixion. In this part of the play, Knapp had me enter the scene slowly from a sub stage below with a mask over my face wearing an ancient Greek style Chiton (long flowing robe), holding a large hand held mirror and sporting cothurni (enormously tall wooden shoes). The cothurni were over a foot high and were like wearing a combination of Frankenstein boots and spiked heals. It was those large wooden shoes that gave me the most trouble. Once I put them on, I was almost seven feet tall. They were extremely heavy which made walking with them on a chore. For my big entrance, I had to walk up a narrow stairway from the stage below, (wearing the cumbersome costume and mask) enter up stage center to face an angry mob. My line went something like, “Whom do you choose? Jesus or Barabbas?” The crowd chanted “Barabbas” and then I let Barabbas free and condemned Jesus to be crucified. After that, I washed my hands in a bowl of water and then exited back down those narrow stairs as they took Jesus away. There must have been bad karma playing the Pontius Pilot character. One night, during a performance, I was trying to exit by slowly descending the dark narrow stairway to the stage area below. But that night, I just couldn’t make it down that narrow stairway wearing those cothurni and fell down the entire flight of stairs to the stage below and broke my foot. I am thankful the audience didn’t see it. I finished the show that night with the broken foot and then was taken to the hospital where they put a full leg cast on me. I thought I would have to leave the show, but Knapp would have none of it and had me complete the run of the show on crutches. After the run of Mysteries and Passion, and falling down the stairs, I truly felt that I had learned to leap into the darkness. Both Glenn Cannon and Terence Knapp are great directors and acting coaches and I was extremely fortunate to study and work on several projects with them.

  While living in Hawaii, I also learned how to dub both animated and live action characters. I needed money to pay my education expenses just like any other student so I started looking for a job. At first I did the usual type of college jobs working at the school and then later at one of the Waikiki hotels. As you could imagine, there weren’t very many acting jobs in Hawaii that one could be hired in exchange for acting services. So landing an acting job like this was not easy. My girlfriend at the time and fellow graduate student was part of a women’s group of writers and heard about the dubbing of a live action Japanese show Ultra 7 into English. She got me an audition and I got the part. While I had no actual experience in ever voicing a character in a live action or animated film, I did have some experience in performing Japanese Kabuki and Peking Opera on stage in New York. I thought at the time, (wrongly so) that I could utilize Asian theatre acting techniques to create the characters in this Japanese show. The show featured a lot of action martial arts sequences so I figured I had it covered. I quickly learned that live stage acting techniques for Kabuki or Peking Opera were of little use in this early dubbing session. Though years later, I would rely on some of my knowledge of Kabuki in getting cast in an ABC Television pilot called Camp Grizzly (1980). I played a riding instructor from New York City who knew nothing about horses or riding. You would think that would be funny enough on its own. But I added a sort of Kabuki dance when I auditioned. The producer and network liked it at first, then changed their minds and recast the entire show. I also used Kabuki in creating Rand for Robotech but will talk more about that later. But at that moment in time, when I showed up the first day to voice the Ultra 7 series, I knew in my heart that it was going to be a learn as you go experience for me. But I thought to myself, “Everybody’s got to start somewhere!”

  The cast of Ultra 7 collectively had little or no experience in voice acting, dubbing or writing ADR. Some of us, (including me) were graduate students at the Drama School at the
university, others were well known local actors that were mainstays within the Honolulu theatre scene. These were the actors that got all the lead roles anytime a local theatre company produced a play there. They were, by no means, well known outside of that universe. But within, the Hawaiian universe, they were well known and respected. We were all learning as we went along which made the Ultra 7 dubbing process challenging. The producer assured us that all would go smoothly and that the production company had all the scripts written in English and ready to record. All the voice actors had to do was use those English translations and create individual voices for each character in the series. However, once we started recording, we all learned that that was not the case. The English language scripts we worked from were all written in Japan and were literal translations from the original Japanese dialogue. We found out very quickly that literal translations, although perhaps accurate, were often not written in sync or conversational. For example, in one scene, a truck driver trying to cross a bridge blocked by another car wanted the driver to move out of the way so he could pass. The trucker’s line read something like, “You better move your car pal! Or I’ll beat you to many pulps!” Not only was this line not in sync, it was also not conversational. When we came upon these literal lines (and there were many) we had to stop the recording and re-write the script to sync. Back in those pre Robotech days, none of us had any idea of what kinds of sounds fit specific types of lip movements. So we kind of eye balled it the best we could. Steve Kramer in later years would teach me about fricatives and plosives. There were also the cultural challenges of creating a conversational dialogue that would be believable to an American audience within the framework of what was already shot live in Japanese. Whenever my character Planet Man Dan would answer a ringing phone, the English translation, in order to be in sync with picture, would always say, “Hello, Hello!” The reason for this is purely cultural. The original Japanese dialogue spoken by Planet Man Dan when a phone was picked up was “mushi mushi” or “moshi moshi” which means hello. However, to get the original Japanese dialogue to match the lip movements when converted to English, we would have to say “Hello, Hello” quickly (one Hello following the other) in order to get the sync right. As I recall, my character spoke on the phone often and I got very good at saying “hello hello” to fit “mushi mushi” in sync and making it look like that was a normal thing to do for an American audience. Years later, I used this same “mushi mushi” skill in a movie called Godzilla 1985.

  In Godzilla 1985, one of the characters that I voiced was a solitary solider on guard duty standing on a coastal bridge outside of Tokyo. In the distance, coming out the ocean, Godzilla approaches. Without warning, the monster’s head rises ominously out of the ocean then the full body until the soldier spots Godzilla coming out of the water. He runs into his guard shack, cranks up his phone and holding the receiver with two hands, puts it up to his mouth as he cringes in horror:

  GUARD: (cranking phone and gasp REAX)

  GODZILLA: (roars at the top of his lungs)

  GUARD: (on Phone) Hello Hello. Godzilla is now approaching Tokyo!

  The hard part about this little piece of dialogue was that the “mushi mushi/hello hello had to be in perfect sync. Then, it was followed by the word Godzilla that was actually spoken by the guard (well almost) as “Gojira” which in Japanese is a cross between a Gorilla (gorira) and a whale (kujira). The line had to be right on the mark and match the lip movements of the guard. Then, as if that weren’t enough, the Japanese guard also says the word “Tokyo” in Japanese that had to be hit right on the mark as well. A moment later, Godzilla spots the little guy and before the guard can say another word, he’s vaporized. But, not before letting out one very loud death scream. You might be thinking that’s a lot of effort to voice a frantic bridge guard who has one line and a death scream. But the truth is, that each one of these little scenes is part of a larger mosaic and must be done as realistically as possible. When we did Godzilla 1985, we tried to make what we all thought was a boring script, funny whenever possible. I think I improvised one or two takes of my bridge guard and made him say something like, “Hello Hello – Godzilla’s here and he refuses to pay toll,” something like that.

  And as the guard is vaporized, I said something like, “Didn’t say may I!” But the producer wanted a true to life depiction of the monster gone wild as a result of the world’s use of nuclear weapons. So, we just voiced the lines that were in the script. But I digress, back to Ultra 7.

  The majority of the scripts for Ultra 7 that were sent from the producer in Tokyo (although in English) made no sense within the scene or had no sync. When this happened in the studio, the lines had to be rewritten on the spot and I had to come up with lines that made sense and were in sync. It was truly trial by fire. You might come up with a great line that would work well within the context of the scene but was slightly out of sync. With that said, remember that old cliché’ “almost only counts in horse shoes and the hand grenades.” When it’s out of sync, even if it’s a flap, it’s out of sync which undermines the reality of the scene. Instead of being into the reality of the characters and situation, the audience is reminded that the work is dubbed. This is not a good thing. When Ultra 7 was recorded into English, it was done in an ensemble format. All of the actors sat on tall stools in a circle. At the head of the circle was a large screen with time codes running on the top or bottom spaces. Each actor had his or her own microphone and marked script. During the recording process, the actors performed single lines or an exchange of several lines of dialogue with multiple characters within a scene. The entire episode was done in chronological order from first page to last. I’d like to note that the Robotech series was not done this way. Usually, the principle actors in Robotech would perform their lines alone within a particular session working with one script at a time. We might work on several episodes but only one voice and character at a time. When I completed the lines of my character in one episode, we would then move on to another episode. More than often, we would never see the other actors within the series who voiced the characters we were talking to. During the Robotech series, I came into the studio just to voice my own character and didn’t see any other actors unless they were just leaving or just arriving. Also, if you were early on in the recording process, you might not have a line of dialogue or a cue to listen to when recording your lines. All this meant was that lines were not yet recorded. In other instances, there were lines already recorded by other actors that could act as an auditory cue for the line that I had to say. Having the line there that was before yours was also helpful to set the tone, tempo and volume of your response. The Robotech experience was built more upon the relationship of the writer, director and voice artist. The Ultra 7 process was more of a collective ensemble experience. It was a different process all together.

  During the recording of Ultra 7, it was an ensemble effort and when we got to a section of the script in which a given line or section didn’t make sense or not in sync, everything stopped. The actors either took a break while the line was rewritten or collectively the line was rewritten on the spot with everyone’s input. This ensemble process was great because you were able to get a collective energy for the characters and episode but it was also very slow. To try to address the issue of slowness, the producers decided that the Japanese translations of the scripts should be reviewed and rewritten (where needed) before the voice actors went into the studio. The idea was to make the scripts more conversational than the literally translated versions they were getting from Japan and make sure the individual character lines were all in proper sync. I was asked to become part of this pre-record process and reviewed scripts for sync, sense of lines and conversational quality. I did rewrites on many of the scripts and it was a great way to learn how to write sync. The truth of it was, I had no interest in sync and was more focused on character and story. But, I did rewrite many of the scripts for appropriate sync even though I hated doing it. Once this new procedu
re was put in place, the recording sessions went faster and drastically reduced those instances where we had to rewrite dialogue in the studio during recording. I realized then how writing a dubbed script, as tedious as it was, could positively influence my ability to create character voices on future projects. If you want to learn how to create a voice, in sync within a dubbed format, writing scripts really gives you a sense of how everything fits together. But just when things started to fall nicely in place during recording each episode, the producers of Ultra 7 had a new challenge for the voice actors to overcome. They asked us if we could voice characters during a live stage presentation.